The Raven Boys

Maggie Stiefvater was excellent in the anthology "The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories," but I have been lax in reviewing her books, a mistake I will rectify by drawing your attention to the first in her new(ish) triology:   "The Raven Boys."
     
Blue's first love will die after she kisses him.  Gansey wills stop at nothing to find a sleeping, hidden Welsh king of ages past. Blue knows that Gansey will die before the year is out, and because she knows that she knows that she will be the one to kill him.  Gansey is a Raven Boy, an elite and privilege student in the local private school who can make you believe he has everything under control. In Blue's race to save Gansey's life, she may end up killing him.
        Never trust a Raven Boy.

I was not a fan of Maggie Stiefvater's "Shiver" series, because I do not really put up with books that are merely about romance for the sake of romance.  I did like her "Scorpio Races" which was much better, though there was a lot of romance in there, but it was just for the sake of romance.  There were also flesh-eating horses, which is always a bonus.  "The Raven Boys" is by far the best novel she's written, and though it has romance it's romance-y with the threat of death.  So, that's perfectly acceptable.
        Also, it has my favorite thing.  A cast of absolutely crazy characters.  Blue is the main character.  She's a pretty standard tough-girl female heroine, but not in a bad way.  She has her own personality and is not stereotypical at all.  At first, I thought because she didn't have any physic powers the main conflict in the book would be her attaining the powers that were meant to be hers, or something awful and perfectly predictable like that.  I am happy to report, though, that that is not the part of the book.  Throughout the book she remains normal, but also a cut ahead of standard.  Blue is, put simply, I character that I would like to be. Though, I guess I didn't read the description of her appearance close enough, because I never get why Noah says she has spiky hair.
       The Raven Boys are also fantastic.  Noah--we'll discuss Noah in a minute, but Noah is awesome.  Gansey is the ring-leader, who is arrogant, well-intentioned, determined, and hardly able to see past the tip of his own nose.  Metaphorically, of course. Adam is the shy guy who is equally, if not more, determined to make a place for himself in the world. And, of course Ronan Lynch is your bad boy. His father was killed in front of him, so he enjoys getting drunk and getting into fist fights, as well as feeding baby ravens at the crack of dawn.  The juxposition in his personality makes him one of my favorite characters.  Oh, and if you couldn't tell, he's Irish.  (I am too, so I find it amusing.)
      Now, onto Noah.  Since this is Maggie Stiefvater, you accept that you are in her sort of off-kilter world the moment you open the cover (the off-kilter part of the world being flesh eating horses and whacked-out werewolves).  So, one of the first things that Noah says--or, more specifically, is said about Noah in Noah's presence--is sort of strange.  But, hey, this is fiction, so you accept it. Then, about seventy-five pages from the end of the book, everyone all goes like 'Omigod! Noah's actually _______ !' but you're like 'uh, yes, I knew that when Declan first said that, dummies.'  Anyways.  That still doesn't stop Noah from being awesome.
       The plot of this book is pretty good, with enough twists to keep you occupied.  Some of the things I like are the fact that:
             1) A relaxed atmosphere is maintained for the better part of the book.  It's the calm before the storm.  And, maybe people do find out who their true selves are in the face of adversary  but occasionally you want to meet the people before you are thrust into their fight with their adversary   You get to see the personalities of Blue and the Raven Boys fully develop before everything begins to crumble into pieces.
             2) Everyone knows something's going to happen.  It's said multiple times by multiple people.  Occasionally in books it's like normal-normal-normal-normal-DISASTER!  That is a very annoying habit. Because disaster doesn't come on suddenly, you can see it brewing for a while off.  In this book, you can.  Even though it's calm, you can see the storm brewing on the horizon  and you can see that despite all of the build-up and wait, it's going to be one dang good storm.
          Though, sadly, I think I already know what Gansey is going to wish for when he finds the Welsh king. (You get one wish if you find the king. It's not like I'm giving everything away, because it's told to you almost straight off.)  I mean, if you think about it it's pretty obvious.  But, maybe there will be some devastating twist and it won't actually happen that way.  Or, maybe, it'll happen the way I think it will happen and it won't be half-bad because I'm secretly a sap at heart.
          Even if the ultimate ending appears to be a bit predictable, the ending is anything but, and it is fantastic.  Everything is evening out perfectly, coming together in a happy ending in sort of a creepy/sad way.  Happy endings are always nice when they aren't too sappy.  And then my one of my favorite characters says something spectacular.  One of the best things about that line is that it hardly makes any sense.  (You know that you have a good book when the last sentence hardly makes any sense whatsoever, yet you still want to know what it means.)
        And, on that note, I might tell you that the sequel is called "The Dream Thief" is coming out on September 17th (2013, in case you're a time traveler and you were wondering what year you are in), and from the looks of it it's going to be focused around one of my favorite characters, namely one who's bald and tattooed and failing out of school and evidently has a penchant for stealing dreams.
         What did I say?  Never trust a Raven Boy.

http://maggiestiefvater.com/  I haven't looked at it yet, but it looks like a pretty interesting website, which is always good, because usually book websites can be very, uh, dull.

The Curiosities: A collection of stories

"The Curiosities:  a collection of stories"  a, well, collection of stories, all by either Brenna Yovanoff, Tessa Gratton, or Maggie Stiefvater.
      Psychopaths with piano wire, dragon slayers with one night left to live, puddles that contain secrets or puddles that contain the zombie virus, silver boxes that hold hearts and the key to living . . . Maggie Stiefvater, Brenna Yovanoff, and Tessa Gratton explore the "playground" (more of an, uh, insane asylum) of their minds with short stories posted to their blogs.  Each author makes comments on the side margins of one another's work, providing extra insight to each of the wonderfully twisted stories, which are works of art themselves.  Whether you're reading about delightful zombies, Nordic beserkers, or a world on fire, the worlds they exist in are both perfectly exquisite, and wonderfully alien.

This is, hands down, the best anthology ever.  Better than that "Steampunk" one, and you know how I prattled on about that.  And this one had hardly a wit of identifiable steampunk in it.
      I have recently discovered, within me, a passion for stories that end unhappily.  I discovered it before I read this book.  But, anyway, if you do not like unhappy endings, do not read further.  Never look for the book on the shelves.  The stories are realistic, to some degree, and not every tale has a happy ending with glitter and butterflies.  Sometimes people have to cut out their hearts. And this makes me happy.
      Each of the stories is something vastly different, if ever the same.  Nearly all of the stories revolve around a teenage girl heroine, who has to overcome some ordeal.  Sometimes she gets slaughtered, sometimes she succeeds in her task, and sometimes you're left standing on a barbed wire fence, an eye on both possibilities.          
      The characters or settings may not be very deep or well-developed characters, but that's only because the stories are brief clips. I can deal with that when the stories are as haunting as they are here, though with every character you want to know more about them. Where did they come from?  Who are they really?  Where are they going?  What are they trying to tell you?  Reading this book is like looking through a picture album, each picture from a different place, telling a different story.
       Maggie Steifvater wrote the "Shiver" series (a bunch of romantic claptrap), don't ask me what the series is really called.  She also wrote "The Scorpio Races," which looks to be infinitely better.   Brenna Yovanoff wrote the amazing "The Replacement" and the equally dazzling "The Space Between."  I've never read anything by Tessa Gratton, but her main focus seems to be with the Nordic Gods, which is always good.
       I can't really do much more analyzing, unless I want to basically tell you what half the stories are.  I can tell you, though, that you have to READ THIS BOOK.  If you don't, there's not telling you what horrible fate you might come to, whether it be death by piano wire or lack of good literature.
   
The idea for this book started on  www.merryfates.com   All of the stories are posted here, as well as some extra ones, if you don't want to get off your computer and go to the library.